Treesearch

Streams and riparian zones have been fertile ground for ecosystem science and a battleground for forest policy and management in the wet Pacific Northwest west of the crest of the Cascade Range for many decades. Competing, high-value resources of salmon and big Douglas-fir timber and their iconic places in cultures of the region sharpened the clash of values. Landslides from forestry operations and roads and elevated water temperature in streams where forest cover had been removed were points of physical connection between steep slope forestry and cold-water fishes. Logging slash from...

Changes in human populations, water use, climate, and related disturbances are impacting riparian ecosystems throughout the western United States. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the arid American Southwest (Gutzler 2013; Molles et al. 1998; Webb et al. 2007). Changes in southwestern riparian ecosystems are often visible to the casual eye in the form of reduced and channelized water along stream courses, loss or changes in riparian vegetation, fire, and urbanization. To manage these changes and improve ecosystem resiliency for the future, a better understanding of the impacts of...

Much of fire behavior is driven by fine-scale patterns of fuel moisture; however, moisture predictions typically occur over large scales. The source of fine-scale variation in moisture results from a combination of fuelbed properties and overstory forest structure that influences water movement and distribution of solar radiation. Fine-scale moisture variation is of particular relevance in humid forests managed with frequent prescribed fire where fire behavior variation is tightly linked to differential fire effects. Results of a three-tiered experiment combining laboratory and field...

Aim: Population dynamics and disturbances have often been simplified or ignored when predicting regional‐scale tree species distributions in response to climate change in current climate‐distribution models (e.g., niche and biophysical process models). We determined the relative importance of population dynamics, tree harvest, climate change, and their interaction in affecting tree species distribution changes. Location: Central Hardwood Forest Region of the United States. Major taxa studied: Tree species. Methods: We used a forest dynamic model, LANDIS PRO that accounted for population...

Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHCs) are a crucial firefighting suppression resource in the United States. These crews travel substantial distances each year and work long and arduous assignments that can cause accumulated fatigue. Current dispatching practices for these crews are supposed to send the closest resource while adhering to existing fatigue-management policies. In this research, we designed a simulation process that repeatedly implements an optimisation model to assign crews to suppression requests. This study examines the potential effects of using an optimisation approach to...

As innovative harvest systems are developed, the extent to which they can be utilized on the landscape based on machine capabilities is often unclear to forest managers. Spatial decision support models may aid contractors and forest planners in choosing appropriate logging systems based on topography and stand characteristics. Lidar and inventory data from 91 sample plots were used to model site characteristics for 2627 stands in the Slate Creek drainage on the Nez Perce Clearwater National Forest in north-central Idaho, USA, and were integrated into a decision support model to compare...

Heat produced from woody biomass accounts for a significant portion of renewable energy in the United States. Economic and federal policy factors driving institutional adoption of woody biomass heating systems have been identified and examined in previous studies, as have the effects of state policies in support of biomass heating. However, plans for a number of mid- to large-scale biomass facilities have been abandoned after being proposed in communities with many of the factors and policies considered favorable to the adoption of such systems. In many of these cases, opponents cited...

The meaning of compatibility in systems of taper and volume equations has been extended. It is desirable and possible to develop completely compatible taper and volume equation systems that have algebraic compatibility and numeric consistency among all the component equations. Two such taper and volume systems were developed for slash pine in the southeastern United States. One was derived from a recently developed merchantable volume equation (Zhao and Kane 2017), and the other was derived from the well-known Max and Burkhart segmented polynomial taper equation (1976). Three fitting...

Two approaches to greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are common, namely the stock-change approach and the gain–loss approach. With the stock-change approach, mean annual emissions are estimated as the ratio of the difference in stock estimates at two points in time and the number of intervening years. The stock-change approach is fairly easy to implement for countries with well-established forest sampling programs. However, countries without established forest sampling programs more commonly use the gain–loss approach. With this approach, emissions are estimated as the product of the areas...

Over the past 20 years, the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) has caused considerable tree mortality across the Rocky Mountain region of the western United States. Although the operational and cost impacts of dead timber are generally well known in the sawmill industry, there remains a need to better understand the impact of large-scale outbreaks on the industry at local and regional scales. Using an expert opinion survey of sawmill managers and procurement staff, this study quantified the relative importance of various cost and operations factors related to harvesting and...